SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking Elon Musk

Re:SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking... by bitexploder on Friday June 17, 2022 @09:51AM (#31778149)

If I might be so bold, I don’t think anyone around here really appreciates Musk’s antics very much. However Tesla and SpaceX are fundamentally sound, if overvalued, businesses. Since the start of Tesla he has had loud and obnoxious detractors who have had any number of reasons Tesla is about to implode. Instead they keep churning out solid EVs and SpaceX keeps putting stuff in space. As much as I dislike him, I would not bet against his businesses.

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Re:SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking... by michaelt on Friday June 17, 2022 @10:37AM (#31778856)

Tesla is certainly a solid business in the sense that they make cars people are happy to buy. I certainly wouldn't expect the value of the business to drop to zero.

But Tesla has a Price/Earnings ratio of 100 while other car companies like Toyota only have a P/E of 10. So Tesla's stock price could drop a long way while still being reasonable.

And if Musk had got a loan against his Tesla stock to buy Twitter, a substantial drop in Tesla's price could have disproportionate results.

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Re:SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking... by pclmulqdq on Friday June 17, 2022 @09:55AM (#31778203)

Fundamentally sound doesn't always matter if they are overvalued enough. Companies that take a 99% drop in stock price are likely to end up losing the last percent in a bear market based on lack of confidence from investors.

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Re:SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking... by diogofranco on Friday June 17, 2022 @10:13AM (#31778485)

There is no last percent, it can drop another 99% and then another...

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Re:SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking... by pclmulqdq on Friday June 17, 2022 @10:29AM (#31778756)

There is a "last percent" when you are thinking about drops from peak value, which is how many people think about stock prices.

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Re:SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking... by BbzzbB on Friday June 17, 2022 @11:05AM (#31779269)

If TSLA gets valued down to $7B then we're all fucked, the floor will have fallen from under the stock market as a whole.

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Re:SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking... by api on Friday June 17, 2022 @09:56AM (#31778221)

His businesses are not just him. He's the public face. They all have shareholders and many employees.

I give Gwynne Shotwell a ton of credit for actually running SpaceX on a day to day basis.

I think a lot of the issues with Tesla exist because as far as I can tell Tesla does not have a Gwynne Shotwell.

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Re:SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking... by glitchc on Friday June 17, 2022 @10:13AM (#31778483)

It's Gwynne who fired these people.

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Re:SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking... by shswkna on Friday June 17, 2022 @10:28AM (#31778736)

I think that was the point.

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Re:SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking... by dont__panic on Friday June 17, 2022 @11:15AM (#31779418)

It's an interesting strategy, really -- build a sorta-neat stable business, and affiliate it with a buffoon who constantly overpromises to his cult following to inflate the stock price to outrageous values.

Then, your "sorta-neat stable business" has MASSIVE amounts of value from stock grants, capital it can use to hire more, pay more, finance debt for large purchases, etc. Kind of a superpower for an otherwise unremarkable company.

Of course, there's other externalities from the buffoon and his cultists. They can drive away good workers, or pivot the company in unpleasant directions, or just leave some day, tank the company stock, and then the company loses the superpower and all of the things that come with it. But if your main mission is growth, well, it makes a lot of sense...

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Re:SpaceX said to fire employees involved in letter rebuking... by user_named on Friday June 17, 2022 @11:55PM (#31787148)

I didn't say anything about the companies but the Tesla stock. It's going to crash when rates rise and capital flees risk.

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